ALLAN ROGERS TAKES FRENCH LEAVE
NOW IS THE WINTER OF
OUR DISCOUNT TENT©
(….and Caravan.)

You find a real holiday atmosphere..........
The sparkling blue swimming pools are set among mature trees and feature a bar that you can swim up to for ice creams and cool drinks.
There are also enough interesting places around to enable you to vary the holiday activities.

As we get ready to “spring into Summer” It is time to be thinking about getting the best deal for a family holiday. If your sights are set in France then why not do what the French do and learn to love “Le Camping.”

As we all know, nowadays this can include the luxuries of life like the fridge and the DVD player. It has all come a long way since the days when we drove all the way to Saint Tropez with a young family packed in with the camping gear. Their complaints echoed in my ears, as I bent the tent pegs hammering them into ground baked hard by the sun. It was not a fun start but it eventually became a glorious holiday.

You can do it that way if you want, but there are bargains and comfort to be had by taking up the early booking offers from the companies who provide mobile home and camping holidays.
These have certainly grown in number since “Canvas Holidays” was started in 1965 by a Scot called Jim Cuthbertson as a family run business. At that time the newly recruited staff was shown how to put up the tents in his garden. Now the company has a 500 strong overseas team and a small army moving round from site to site erecting equipment at the beginning of each season.

There are choice sites in most of the European countries but it is the ones in France that attracted us most.

Head for the West and Vendee and you will find holiday parks frequented mainly by the French, go to the south and you will be rubbing shoulders with sun seekers from Holland and Germany.

Last year we went to Argelès-sur-Plage in the South of France, in the Languedoc – Roussillan area, it is about as far west as you can get and sits between a four mile long golden Mediterranean beach and the mountains of the Pyrenees.

With over sixty camp sites to choose from, (some connected to the town and beaches by a road train,) it offers a lot of choice. I had a look at many of them and found one of the best to be “Camping le Soleil” It had lots of pine trees and plants like the bright red “bottle brush.”

If you can select a camping or caravan site where the trees outnumber the people you will be happy. Quite apart from waking up to the birdsong, shade is a vital factor. The sun will beam down from a cloudless sky and the temperatures can climb up into the 30’s and even 40’s, and, lets face it you will be eating out of doors most of the time.

The French have certainly developed and landscaped their camp sites and by comparison many British ones appear horribly stark and treeless, not to mention over priced!

When you take up residence in your holiday home, amid scented pines with the swallows, magpies and butterflies, if you are lucky you may even spot the distinctive “Hoopoe birds”.
These are small, exotic looking birds, with a crest of feathers on their heads.
The call they make is a soft, deep-sounding ‘hoop, hoop, hoop’. The name has been adopted for the youngster’s Hoopi Club.

Run by children’s couriers it meets twice a day and occupies the younger members of the family. (4 – 11 year olds) Ball games, face painting, treasure hunts and Harry Potter Days are just a few of the activities.

On the way to the two large pools you pass the children’s play park and a collection of small animals. Beguiling baby goats, ducks and rabbits draw out “ooohs” and “aaahs” from adults and children alike. It is rather wonderful to see how the language barrier disappears when youngsters of the different nationalities play together.
You used to be able to tell which country people came from by the number plates on the car. This is no longer the case with cheap flights available on the internet folk are able to fly in and pick up a local hire car.

The exotic accents that hit your ears could just as easily be Irish as Dutch.The beach is just beyond the trees and beside the paths that lead to it large bright yellow and orange flowers bloom on the cactii.



Horses graze and look at you with soft brown eyes, some times groups of riders come clomping by, that is just one of the options for exploring.

When you are ready to face driving in the car again you can visit the markets in the adjacent towns of Elne and St Cyprien, or further down the coast, see the picturesque village of Collioure, or the even little bays that lay before the Spanish border.

The closest alternative beach to Argelès-sur-Plage is the one at Le Racou. It is backed by the rows of little beach houses. These replace the shacks that were established half a century ago before the current tourist boom.

You can use flippers and mask to meet the fish that live around the rocks at the end of the sandy bay or have lunch and eat their relatives.

We dined well at the “Copacabana” an interesting and reasonably priced snack bar.

While you wait for Helly and Nicky to prepare your meal you can admire the pictures that adorn the walls.
These photographs from their winter expeditions.

True traveler, s the happy pair visit a different continent each year. Chatting to them will add colour to your holiday.

As to eating at the campsite, there is something very pleasant about the pre-breakfast stroll to the camp shop to collect the bread and croissant.

The shop is well enough stocked but when you first arrive you may want to shop with the locals at the markets and air conditioned supermarkets in the surrounding towns. These have everything you could with the bonus of wine at bargain prices. If you want to stretch the budget the Lidl supermarket in Argelès village offers good value.

The beach by Camping le Soleil is long enough not to be crowded; you can build sand castles, fly kites, even shed clothes and join the nudists or just unwind floating in the buoyant Mediterranean looking up at the mountains of the Pyrenees. A trace of snow on one of the peaks may make you think of home, but not for long.

It is well worth the long drive to get there. The Canvas Holiday tents, which are the largest in the industry, and the well equipped mobile homes are set in tree lined avenues.

You find a real holiday atmosphere making it ideal for families. The sparkling blue swimming pools are set among mature trees and feature a bar that you can swim up to for ice creams and cool drinks.

There are also enough interesting places around to enable you to vary the holiday activities as the mood takes you.

Allan Rogers

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I NFORMATION

Canvas Holidays Ltd 12 East Port, Dunfermline, KY12 7JG
Tel: 01383 629 000
Web: http://www.canvasholidays.co.uk/
Email: reservations@canvasholidays.com

Tourist Office.
Web: http://www.argeles-sur-mer.com/

Camping Le Soleil
Web: http://www.campmed.com/campfran/csoleil/legal.htm
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